


The Colour Red

by tequila2077



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Withdrawal, F/M, Femdom, Imprisonment, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Psychological Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Slavery, Slavery, Torture, Vulpes Inculta Being an Asshole, Vulpes gets what's coming to him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26458324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tequila2077/pseuds/tequila2077
Summary: After the attack on the Fort and death of Caesar, Vulpes Inculta awakes to find himself captured by the very Courier he was stalking. Collared and chained, the greatest of Caesar's Frumentarii becomes the lowliest of slaves.WARNING: This fic is graphic and has disturbing themes.
Relationships: Female Courier/Vulpes Inculta
Comments: 13
Kudos: 64





	1. Like a Fox in a Trap

Smell is the first sense to be returned to him. Burlap - the earthy scent pierces the deep muck of his consciousness and tears a hole for the rest of the world to crawl in. Sound – his boots scraping against dirt. Taste – the copper tang of blood (his own, no doubt). Touch – the pain in his shoulders, two weights that lift him from under his armpits and wrench him further across the ground, in spurts. His sense of sight eludes him, and Vulpes realises the smell of burlap he first awoke to is a rough sack that’s been tied around his head, thick enough that he can’t make out but the faintest pinpricks of light.

His first instinct is to drive his heels into the ground and throw his assailant over his shoulder, pull off the sack while they’re dazed. But when he tries to move his legs, he finds them heavy, unresponsive. In fact, his entire body refuses to listen to his commands, limbs acting as if they were entombed in concrete. _Poison,_ he realises a moment later. Perhaps whoever had done this had underestimated the dosage, thought him a weakling. An undersight on their part, one that would soon prove fatal. Vulpes had intimate knowledge of the effects of poisons and toxins – every potential frumentarii had to prove themselves capable of surviving a dose of bleak venom to even be considered fit for training.

The creak of rusted metal echoes in his ears. He’s dragged a little further and then dropped down onto a cold, hard floor. From the rough, slightly cracked nature of its surface he guesses it’s concrete. Again, he tries to shake off the paralysis, but only manages a twitch. A serpent coils around him, it’s hiss, the rattle of iron chains. His hands are twisted behind him and clad in metal, along with his feet, the harsh clicks of their locks punctuating the otherwise silent atmosphere. Then, only his own breathing. Perhaps they’re checking their handiwork.

The bag comes off.

Vulpes squints involuntarily, the sudden flood of light overwhelming him. Blinding white fades into shadows, then shapes, and soon he’s looking at the inside of a prison cell. A faded green cot chained to the wall, a toilet and sink standing open in the corner, and a row of metal bars to his right. His cheek is pressed against the cold concrete.

“Mother Darkness. Learned the recipe out in Zion. Took a while to get th’dose right – usually kills in less than a minute. Made a special batch just for you, Vulpes.”

He recognises the rough voice, the uneducated twang in the slight slur of every letter. A pair of metal-studded boots fill his vision. The courier named Coyote.

The whore who killed Caesar.

Vulpes summons all his strength and tilts his head an inch upward and regards the dog in front of him with a cool, placid glare. He resists the initial urge to spit on her boots, lest she delude herself into believe she’s vexed him. This is a minor inconvenience, one that will be rectified as soon as he gains control of his limbs and strangles the life out of her.

The steel toe of her boot digs into his shoulder and he’s pushed onto his back, staring at the remains of what once was a white stucco ceiling. The chill of the concrete begins to seep into his spine and Vulpes realises he’s been stripped down to his tunic. A hand on his shoulder drags him upwards in a sitting position, and he holds it. The poison is wearing off.

The courier slowly drags a steel chair from the corner of the room, its legs screeching across the floor with a grating noise that irritates his sensitive hearing. She sets it down in front of him, spins it around and sits on it with her chest and elbows resting across its back, planting one foot on either side. Looks at him with an unreadable expression, although the prominent scarring twists one half of her face into a permanent snarl. A nagging pain begins to form between his shoulder blades. He welcomes the feeling, knowing his strength will soon be returned to him.

“Been tailing me a while, Vulpes?”

“ **Vulpes**.” he corrects, “If you have trouble remembering, perhaps I’ll carve it on your corpse.”

“That’ll be some trick,” the courier replies, pulling a glass bottle from her pocket, “since I took all your knives while you were out.” She twists the cap off the glass and takes a large gulp of the liquid inside. Even from his spot on the floor the stench of alcohol fills his nostrils.

“Another one of your vices, courier? My sources say you’ve quite the dependent personality, even for a profligate.” His eyes fall on the small circular bruises that trail up her arms, some of which were still an angry, puckered red. “Your time in the Mojave has been profitable, and there seems to be no shortage of places that peddle such filth here in the West.” He locks eyes with her, unblinking, and continues. “Or perhaps you obtain them with other means, hm? Although, a woman of your visage…well, I know for a fact the Fiends aren’t all too picky.”

“Cut the shit, Vulpes.” Coyote replies. “I know you’re just stalling until the poison wears off.”

The corner of his mouth threatens to twitch into a frown. He suppresses it. When his men started observing the courier, reports sent back to him placed her as an irrational, short-sighted vagabond. A dissolute among the dissolute. He’d expected her to rise to the bait.

“I’m just commenting on how impressive it is that you hold such influence.” His tone takes on a saccharine melody, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. “Quite a feat, for a psycho-addicted profligate whore.”

“A whore that killed Caesar.” Coyote retorts.

At the mention of the late Mars, Vulpes feels a flicker of anger bubble within him, and works to squash it. At the Fort she had been little more than a rabid animal, foaming at the mouth. Caesar’s mark had allowed her to take them by surprise and her companions use of cloaking technology had been…unprecedented, but she fought with nothing more than brute aggression, not tactics. She was a degenerate of the highest calibre, and he was the greatest of Caesar’s Frumentarii. He prided himself on knowing the inner workings of his prey, picking at the weakest point in their minds, manipulating them to _his_ wishes. He only needed to find the right string to pluck.

“Yes. Not many on this earth could stage an assault on Caesar’s camp and survive. You should consider yourself lucky.” A smile creeps onto his face, “A shame that luck didn’t extend to that NCR dog of yours.”

Her expression doesn’t change, but Vulpes sees her knuckles turn bone white as they clench around the glass bottle. When she silently raises herself from the chair and walks over, he can’t help a small chuckle escape him. “Allow me to give him some credit. For an NCR weakling, he really held out. Even after my ripper spilled his intestines out. Did you know, courier, that stomach wounds are one of the slowest, most painful ways to die? Well, no matter. I suppose it’s water under the bridge, now.”

She’s stops a foot away, looking down at him with a glare he sees only rarely on the most disobedient slaves. A rage so cold the face cannot hope to mask it. It warms his heart.

“Vulpes,” she says softly, “are you thirsty?”

He isn’t given a chance to respond before the courier pours the entire contents of the bottle over his head, the strong alcohol stinging his eyes and filling his nose and lungs with an ungodly vapour as he splutters and coughs, yearning for clean air.

“Shit, my bad. Let me get that for you.”

She’s quick. A hand draws back before he can realise what’s coming, and then the bottle explodes on his face, pain blossoming on his lacerated skin as blood starts to seep from his forehead down to his jaw. The force of the blow throws him to the side, bashing his head onto the floor and making his ears ring. A lesser man would’ve cried out, but decades of training have made him no stranger to pain.

Coyote knees down and grabs a fistful of platinum blond hair. The dim light of the jail cell is captured in the splinters of glass that protrude from his temple, rivulets of blood weeping from them and carving slow paths towards his jawline. One eye is half-shut and twitching next to a large shard that was only an inch away from blinding him. Vulpes prepares himself for another blow as he brings her face within a hair’s breadth of his own.

Her lips part to reveal filed teeth and a glistening wet tongue. She presses gently at the blood on his jaw then drags it up the full length of his face.

Coyote draws her head back. “You know, Vulpes,” she hums, lapping at the gore that’s smeared across her mouth, “red really is your colour.”


	2. The Taste of Ash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N - I'd like to thank everyone for their comments and for checking out this fic. It's my first time publishing something this dark but I'm enjoying writing it so far!

He must have lost consciousness for a moment. The next thing Vulpes is aware of is the sensation of razor wire dragging over his exposed muscle. The courier is wiping his face with a filthy rag and the frayed threads catch on his exposed skin, making him grit his teeth with every jolt of pain. She clutches his chin and tilts his face up and down. Pulls her mouth into a frown, apparently not pleased with her handiwork.

“Mm. That’ll get infected.” she walks over to the iron bars and slips a hand through to dig through a pack, pulling out a glass bottle with a spherical bottom. He immediately recognises it as one of the Bitter Drinks that he’d managed to take as the Fort was under attack.

Returning to him, she pops the cork and curls her lip into an expression of disgust. “Phew! Don’t know how you Legion boys stand this stuff.” Vulpes tries unsuccessfully to dodge her hand as she grabs his chin for the second time and continues. “But I’m not about to waste a stim on you. Besides, you lot don’t believe in medicine, do you?” There’s a savage glint in her eye as she raises the bottle above his head and starts tilting it towards his head. Milky white fluid crawls over the rim in slow motion, a drop that grows and bulges like the swollen belly of a pregnant slave.

“Bottoms up, Vulpes.”

It stings worse than the whiskey did. Vulpes crushes the inside of his cheek between his molars until he tastes blood. The wound bubbles and fizzes and his skin feels like it’s turning inside out. Even after the burning subsides the underneath of his skin crawls. He feels like a corpse, maggots writhing behind his eyes, eating away at muscle and sinew.

“Feeling better?” The courier looks down at his convulsing form with a sharp-toothed grin. Vulpes spits a frothy mouthful of blood at her shoes.

How long he’s left alone in the cell after she leaves, Vulpes doesn’t know. The room has no clock, no windows, nothing to indicate the passage of time. Caged behind his ribs is the steady rhythm of his own heart, a constant _lub-dub_ that beats onward as sure as the ticking of a clock. His shoulders are aching, and any position seems unbearable with his arms shackled behind his back. The concrete makes for a poor mattress, and the chain that binds him is no longer than a few feet, making it impossible for him to reach the cot.

Vulpes manages to wriggle onto his stomach, the non-injured side of his face pressed to the floor. He didn’t think sleep was possible but somehow it sneaks up on him, and the grey, featureless room fades into darkness.

The shrieking of the iron bars wakes him up with a start. His entire body screams at him, every nerve and muscle tight and aching. He struggles upright and every laboured movement brings another twitch or spasm.

Coyote reclines into the steel chair, her leather pants creaking slightly as she throws one leg over the other. The dim like shines over the metal studs in her boot. In her hand is a tin plate of food with steam still rolling off it in thin grey wisps. The smell hits him a second later and all at once his stomach begins to simultaneously eat itself and try and burrow its way out of his body. He hasn’t eaten in days, not since he began his pursuit. Saliva begins to pool inside his mouth, unbidden. He swallows it down.

“Gecko kebabs. Hunted it just this morning.” A metal skewer is balanced in between her thumb and two forefingers. She brings the kebab up to her lips, meat dripping with warm, pink juices. They spill onto her mouth and dribble over her chin as her teeth close around half the skewer. She draws it out and chews lazily, savouring every tender bite of meat and crunch of vegetable. Another two bites, and the kebab disappears, her lips and chin glistening with oily fat. She licks the residue away and wipes the back of her fingerless gloves over her face.

“Hungry, Vulpes?”

“The road to Flagstaff is 300 miles long. When I place these chains around your neck, courier, I’ll make you walk the entire stretch, bare naked.” Vulpes’ voice is cold, an inferno of rage burning in his chest. “Your body will burn and peel under the sun. Your feet will collapse and boil on the tarmac. Your body will be used freely by every stranger we pass, no matter how filthy, how depraved.” Spittle begins to form at the corners of his drying mouth. “By the time we enter the capital I will have broken you into the most depraved, disease-ridden whore in Arizona. And then I’ll have you fed to dogs, alive.”

His ice-blue eyes bore into her, as if she would drop dead if he willed it hard enough.

“Really long speech, Vulpes.” Coyote says with a stifled yawn. “Think the food’s gotten cold, now.”

“ ** _Ego te jugulo vos, meretrix!_** ”

His bellow reverberates in the cramped room. Even Coyote seems surprised at his outburst. Immediately he feels the shame of letting his emotions get the better of him, letting this festering whore delude herself into thinking she made him crack. He is Vulpes. He is the greatest of Caesar’s frumentarii. He does not allow the enemy to gain an advantage – even when his stomach claws at his insides, even when his face throbs with pain. He is a _legionnaire._

“…you sound a lil’ upset there, pal.” Coyote produces a pack of cigarettes from her front pocket and taps the bottom of the pack. A cigarette pops up and she places it directly in her mouth, lighting it. The tin plate is balanced precariously on her thigh, he cannot stop himself from watching it.

“Want some?” he refuses to answer. “Only gonna ask once.”

He’s not hungry.

He’s not hungry.

She goes to eat the second kebab.

He’s _starving._

“…yes.”

“What’s that?”

“ _Yes._ I would like to eat.” He stifles his pride. In his mind he imagines tearing her teeth out, one by one, and that makes it a fraction easier. If he’s going to escape, he needs his strength. He’ll play along. She’ll get comfortable. Get sloppy.

Careless.

“C’mon then.” The conceit in her voice is almost too much to bear. “Close your eyes and open your mouth.”

He obeys. The smell of the gecko overwhelms his senses, makes him forget the humiliating position he’s in. Too late, he notices the undertone of smoke.

When the cigarette is pressed deep into his tongue he screams. All his training fails him. He screams and leaps backwards on his hobbled legs and feels his mouth blister and the sensitive tongue flesh become consumed in a cacophony of screaming nerves. Each breath is a desert wind that only heats the embers still embedded between his teeth. Tears threaten to gather at the corner of his eyes.

Coyote stamps her cigarette out and watches him. A minute ago, Vulpes wanted to rip her limb from limb. Now he only wants water. His breath comes out in thin wheezes and he looks up at her, desperate. Pleading.

“I’ve seen better acting from the Gomorrah whores.” She leaves him squirming and returns pouring a bottle of water into a shallow bowl, then drops it in front of him. Next, she shreds the kebab into the tin plate and pockets the skewer. Then she crosses her arms, waiting. Vulpes realises she expects him to eat and drink off the floor. Like a dog.

Despite the pain, he hesitates. But the promise of cool water is too much to resist. He drives his tongue into the bowl and almost sighs with relief. He stays like that until the water begins to warm and a puddle of spit has formed around the bowl. Drinks the whole thing, and then goes for the food, lapping the mess from his chin to get every morsel. He must stop himself from licking the plate.

When she kneels beside him and produces a needle, he doesn’t resist. Whatever she puts him through now, he can weather with a full stomach. Coyote presses against his neck, finds a vein, and drains the entire shot of Med-X into his system.

The effect is almost instantaneous. Soon the pain fades and the world slows. His body begins to feel heavy and numb. He’s tired. The courier is saying something but the words come to him as if they’re underwater. Vulpes slips into a sleep deeper than sleep, a dreamless, formless black that utterly consumes him.


	3. Headrush

He’s at the bottom of a deep, dark lake, only the watery floor is made of concrete, not silt. His entire body is boneless, relaxed, skin sloughing off the bone and pouring into the cracks of his cell. He exists outside of himself, an outsider watching his body drool onto the filthy floor. Normally Vulpes would be mortified at the indignity, but for some reason he can’t muster the ire. Wonder why.

A memory floats to the surface of his mind’s murky depths. A translucent serpent with a surgical fang. Ah, yes. The whore drugged him. Keeping him docile. He can’t rightly escape in this condition, can he? A small smirk graces his lips. He knows something the whore doesn’t.

He isn’t the only one who escaped the Fort.

Vulpes smile splits into a small chuckle. While he hadn’t expected being captured, a frumentarii was always prepared for every eventuality. Caesar had a policy of suicide before imprisonment, but this was merely a form of…temporary restraint. Soon to be rectified.

At this moment, in one of the Legion’s many safehouses, Antony and his hounds are recovering from the battle. Vulpes has left him with orders to wait three days before tracking his whereabouts, using the scrap of tunic he’d left with the dogs. After that, he went to pursue the courier.

His sense of time in the closed-off cell is hazy, but his body tells him it can’t be long until the three-day period, if it hasn’t passed already. And the courier suspects nothing.

Perhaps they’ll let the dogs have a turn with her after he and Antony are finished, the thought of the courier’s scarred face wrenched into a look of despair and humiliation soothes him as he drifts into another hazy sleep.

Once again, the shriek of the iron bares wakes him. Vulpes tenses, wondering what crude excuse for torture the whore would deign to inflict on him this time. Not that he was afraid, of course. Legionnaires didn’t fear torture. But it…displeased him to wait so long to enact his revenge.

He utters a silent order for Antony to put more effort into his tracking.

Vulpes struggles to his knees – Mars, his muscles are stiff – and, finding new strength, gives the courier an insolent grin. “Good evening, profligate. Another day of acting out your power fantasies?”

“Shut up, Vulpes.” The courier digs the metal studs of her boot into his chest and shoves him back down. Wrenching him up by the biceps, she flips him on his stomach, his chin colliding roughly against the ground. Still, he continues, undeterred.

“Are you familiar with the concept of penis envy? Some of our more troublesome breeding slaves always seem to regard their masters with a certain...jealousy.” he smirks, “Perhaps you, too, feel you are a little lacking? Unfortunate, but there’s no changing the circumstances of your birth.”

Coyote draws her combat knife, wedging it into the bottom of his tunic. “I said, _shut up._ ” The knife glides upwards, ripping through the course red material. It falls away to reveal his toned, muscular back. A criss-cross pattern of faded scars decorates his shoulders.

With his face pressed to the floor Vulpes imagines her expression. Disgust, curiosity? Perhaps she’d planned on whipping him and was disappointed to find his back unmarred.

There’s movement behind him and the he’s drenched in cold water. Rivulets flow down the curve of his spine and his hair is given another dousing until it clings, sopping wet, to his face and eyes. Despite the initial surprise, it’s surprisingly soothing.

“If this is your idea of waterboarding me, I’m afraid it’s rather lacking.”

“You smell like shit.” Coyote flips him over and empties the rest of the bucket onto his chest. Putting it aside, she regards the dripping Vulpes with an unreadable expression.

“Admiring the view? I won’t fault you. After all, you are in the presence of Caesar’s finest.”

“Told you to shut your trap, more th’n once. Thought you legion boys were good at followin’ orders.”

“I don’t take orders from proflig-”

“But if you ain’t gonna listen,” Coyote interrupts, “I’ll just put that mouth of yours to better use.”

She fiddles with the buckle around her hips. It comes loose with a soft click and she slides it out of the loops, leather rustling on leather. The she unzips her pants, pulling them down slightly to reveal a small patch of dark hairs above her pubic bone. For the first time in a long while, Vulpes has no reply.

The courier closes the distance between them, planting one foot on each side of his rips and dropping down to kneel over his naked torso. Vulpes watches, still stunned, as she loops the belt around his neck and slowly, almost gently, pulls it taught. It presses against his Adam’s apple, just loose enough to keep his breathing unrestricted. “What are you…?”

The belt tightens a fraction more, pressing against his jugular. His mouth instinctually snaps shut.

Coyote flashes him a wicked smile. “Now you’re learnin’.”

She pulls and he follows, burning with anger but desperate for air. Pressing her knee against his chest, she manoeuvres him until his back is against the wall, then drops her end of the belt. “Comfy?”

He glares at her but says nothing.

The courier pulls her pants and underwear down to her ankles, stepping out and kicking them off the ankles of her boots. She’s naked from her waist to her knees. His eyes travel downwards to the tuft of dark hair on her mound, but he quickly snaps his head back up.

Covering the distance once more, she picks up the belt and traps his thighs with her legs, his face only inches away from her cunt. Fingers grab fistfuls of his hair and tug it sharply backward so his eyes can meet her gaze. The other hand wraps around the belt and tightens around his neck a little more.

“Now be a good boy n’ mind your teeth,” Coyote growls, “or I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes.”

It wasn’t an empty threat. He could see it in her eyes. The humiliation of servicing a woman like this made his blood boil, but he won’t be killed over something so trivial. Not until he see’s her broken and bleeding. Vulpes gives a curt nod.

Her hips are pushed into his face. He opens his mouth and runs a tongue along the edge of her slit. She’s already wet, he can smell the musk as he delves further, flicking the tip of his tongue along her inner labia. She twitches against him and slight moan escapes her lips.

Though most men of the Legion are rightfully uncaring of their slaves needs, Vulpes position as a spy has seen him take more…creative routes to gain information. Enough times that he’s learned a thing or two more than his foot soldier brethren. He opens his mouth wider and runs the flat of his tongue over her moistening slit, this time sucking gently at her clit. The reaction is instant, the courier bucks her hips and hunches forward to lean her forearms against the wall, one hand snaking downward to grab his hair again and shove his mouth deeper.

If only to get the business over with quicker, Vulpes increases his ministrations. Pushing his tongue deeper into her folds, he licks and sucks firmly on her clit, probing into her inner walls. Soon the courier is panting and moaning in earnest, hiking on leg over his shoulder to force him deep against her. He can only come up for air in brief spurts before the belt around his neck pulls him back to lap at her dripping slit. The humiliation of being dominated was something he could endure, but the sound of her wanton moaning and the smell of her lust has given him an even greater indignity – Vulpes feels his loins stirring with ever gasp and thrust of her hip. He fights to maintain composure but feels himself slipping to his baser urges.

This must end. Before he loses himself. Despite her previous warnings he scraps his teeth, gently as he can, across her upper folds and bites down with only a feather’s touch. Even that is enough to make her jump and clutch the belt, but she doesn’t move away, so he does it again, slightly harder, taking some pleasure out of the defiance. It’s effective, her pants become erratic and a stuttering curse escapes her as his nose is crushed under the force of her hips before suddenly going slack. She shudders against him, basking in the afterglow, before stepping back on unsteady legs.

“God…damn.” Coyote mutters, chest still heaving. “And you were calling _me_ a degenerate.”

His mouth is covered with her juices. Vulpes gives her an icy glare, trying desperately to ignore his growing erection.

“Aw, don’t make that face. Here, I got somethin’ for ya.” Reaching into a pants pocket Coyote pulls out a red inhaler and shakes it. Vulpes recognises it as another profligate drug and presses his lips together tightly. Already his control over his own body was robbed by that bloody syringe.

She presses the inhaler to his mouth, but he resists. A pair of dirty fingers pinch his nostrils tight and he struggles harder, but the fingers and the inhaler stand firm. Eventually the lack of air is too much, unbidden his shudders and gasps, at the same time she compresses the inhaler and sends a jet of acidic air into his lungs. Vulpes coughs, but it only makes him breathe in harder, which brings more bursts from the inhaler. Finally, the courier pulls it away with a smile.

It takes a little longer for the effect to kick in, but when it does, every fibre in his body reacts. All at once the world starts to spin and he finds his body like jelly, eyes rolling around in his skull. His vision blurs and he feels light-headed. Then a calmness overtakes him. His head lolls this way and that, enjoying the sounds of blood rushing in his ears. It’s like flying.

Coyote laughs. “Lookit you. Reminds me of when I was in my teens.”

There’s a low giggling sound. Vulpes realises it’s coming from him. He wills himself to stop, but that just makes him giggle harder. “D…degenerate.” He mutters between snickers.

“Says th’ man wearing a skirt. Speaking of…” her eyes travel downwards, “gettin’ a little frustrated, Vulpes?”

He looks down at the bulge in his pteruges. The profligate drug, it... _did_ something to him. He would never…not from servicing a woman.

He shifts his legs, trying to make it subside, but it only serves to put more friction on his growing need.

“Want me to take care of it?” She was standing and now she’s kneeling beside him, but his addled brain can’t connect the dots and it makes her seem everywhere at once. She places a hand on his thigh without a glance, as if they were simply two friends conversing, but the pressure of her touch so close to him makes his cock twitch.

He is a being of the strongest will. He shall endure. He is Vulpes, the greatest of Caesar’s frumentarii.

“I _said,_ ” she slips a hand under his pteruges “do you want me to take care of it?”. She ghosts her fingers along the head of his cock, thumb pressing against the slit already wet with precum, and he crumbles. The drug intensifies it so much that before he can stop himself Vulpes snaps his hips up, desperate for more of her touch, but she slips her hand away.

“Yes.” He hisses through clench teeth.

“Hm? Speak up, I’m a lil’ deaf in this ear.” She taps the gnarled, half-bitten off earlobe to her left.

“ _Yes._ I want you to touch me.”

“Where?” her impassive voice makes him want to scream.

“My cock. Touch my cock.”

“Like this?” her finger glides feather-light along his perineum, then disappears. It’s worse than nothing at all, a taste of what he’s missing, and that makes his need all the greater.

“N- you- _f-fuck_ …” he whines, actually whines, but there’s no room for shame, only a lust that burns inside the very marrow of his bones and threatens to swallow him whole. “Jerk me off, _please_ …”

She obliges, grabbing his member and pumping his shaft. The sensation is too much, his head swimming, the feeling of flying, her hands. He can feel every finger curled along his cock, pumping up and down, pausing to tease at the head then returning to the shaft. Everything is intensified. With the other hand she tilts his jaw towards her and presses the inhaler to her lips. This time he doesn’t resist, taking a large gulp of acrid air that has him floating again. His orgasm shocks him, Vulpes bucks his hips with a cry and shoots long ropes of come across the bare floor. He slumps down, exhausted, the aftershocks travelling in waves through his muscles.

Coyote wipes her hand across his tunic and stands, collecting her clothes and giving one last look at the legionnaire crumpled on the floor. “You’ll crash in 10, give-or-take. Have fun.” Then she disappears out the door, leaving Vulpes alone with the headrush.


	4. White Picket

The smell of her is still on him when he wakes, as well as an uncomfortable stickiness between his thighs. The normally fastidiously groomed Vulpes sneers in disgust and rubs his legs together in an attempt to remove the evidence of last night (or had it been morning). All it does is remind him of the shameful position he’d been in. Servicing a woman like that, kneeling beneath her…and what happened _after…_ in his mind his desperate pants and pleas are played back to him over and over, causing another white-hot coal of shame to burn in his chest.

It was the drugs, he tells himself. That filthy profligate device she’d pressed to his lips, the reason behind his undoing. He was not someone who came undone from the wanton moaning of a degenerate whore. Vulpes wills the memory to remake itself but a shard of truth remains buried beneath his skull and mocks him.

The screech of metal, an old friend to him by now. The courier walks in carrying another pail full of water and a bundle of cloth draped around her shoulders. When he looks into her eyes she gives him a sly wink, and he averts his gaze, worried his expression might betray him. She flips him onto his back, and he feels the sting of a needle entering his veins, then the rattle of chains, and suddenly a weight is lifted from his wrists.

He tries to move his arms and finds them unresponsive. The sudden image of gangrenous limbs hanging limply on rotting tendons bursts into his mind and an icy needle of fear pricks into the base of his neck. Then his shoulders relax just enough for him to bring his arms to his chest and the fear is replaced with a thrum of pain as his neglected limbs protest their use. Vulpes rubs the chafed skin around his wrists before he can stop himself, and looks up at the courier, confused.

“Half dose this time. Keep you nice n’ behaved. Now don’t,” she gestures towards his free arms, “go doin’ something you’ll regret.”

With that she sets down her burdens and hovers over him, stripping him of the rest of his clothes. He complies with only minor complaints, the drug making him weak and heavy. He’s fully naked, shivering slightly against the concrete, dried sweat and fluid still caked on him. Coyote steps back to give him a once-over.

“You’ve gotten yerself all dirty again. Water ain’t cheap, you know.” Vulpes doesn’t respond, only turns his head and waits patiently for whatever it is she’s about to do to him. “What’s wrong puppy, lose ‘yer bark? Oh well.” She kneels beside him and dunks a mostly clean rag into the bucket and wipes away the grime on his skin. Her strokes are firm, but not painful. One could almost call them gentle, if such a word could ever be attributed to Coyote.

The lukewarm water drips down into the corners of his body as the cloth makes its way across his chest. Without realizing it, Vulpes reclines backwards into the courier’s touch, a mixture of fatigue and med-ex causing his eyes to droop. “What is it like…” he mumbles “to be a whore for Republic dogs?”

Coyote dips the cloth into the bucket again and starts on his back. “Wouldn’t know.”

“Oh? Then it was a different courier with a head wound that killed our spy in McCarren?”

“NCR pays.”

“So do brothel clients.”

“Whores,” she wipes a little too hard over a bruised patch of skin, making him wince, “have pimps. Whores can’t leave. Kinda like legionnaires.”

It’s an obvious jab, but with no bite behind it. Vulpes can’t find the energy to protest, so he changes the subject. “But you are from Republic territory.”

“What gave it away?”

“Your accent is a different breed of uneducated drawl than the one native to the frontier.”

She makes a short sound in the back of her throat, but nothing else that indicates offense. Perhaps she’s heard it before. “Reno.”

“A den of vice to put the Strip to shame, or so I’ve heard.”

The courier lets out a short chuckle, her breath rustling his hair. “Yeah. People think Vegas is bad. There’s thing’s ‘n Reno that’d make a Gomorrah whore shit her thong. Tilt yer head back.”

He complies. She uses her hands to pour water over his tangled blond hair, tugging her fingers through the worst of the knots. He can feel her nails scrape against his scalp. It’s almost…domestic.

“That would make you a republic citizen, would it not?”

“Reno’s different. Families call the shots ‘n they don’t like NCR messin’ with business. I don’t have my greenies. Most people in Reno don’t.”

“Your…?”

“Uh…green slip. Papers. Kids get ‘em when they’re born.”

“Ah.” The Legion had something similar, denoting which stock the recruits had been born or taken from, used to ensure the tribes were interbred. _Removal of blood ties_ , Caesar had told him once. Death by dilution.

Vulpes wondered if his own lineage lay scrawled on a burning scrap of parchment somewhere in the Fort. A list of names long dead, their faces faded from his mind by the annals of time.

“You could have found a place in the Legion.”

At this, she lets out a barking, mirthless laugh. “Yeah. Sure. Done Caesar’s…”

“ _Caesar.”_ he corrects, bristling at the profligate mispronunciation of his Lord’s name.

“Done your boss’s dirty work for him and then get a fuckin’ collar snapped ‘round my neck as a reward.”

Vulpes opens his mouth, then shuts it again. A legionaries’ wife belonged back in Arizona, tending to the home and children. The slave girls were used for labour and morale out on campaign. He couldn’t see the courier doing either. Too rough for a wife. Too wilful for a slave.

Memories of her belt tightening around his neck as she moans flash before his eyes. Too wilful indeed.

They lapse into silence. Water from his hair drips into his eyes and collects in between his lips. He flicks out his tongue to catch it before it spills over his chin. The courier taps the bottom of his forearm and he automatically raises them so she can continue cleaning.

The water is nice. He feels…he feels…relaxed. No, something different than that.

Content.

The realisation claws at him from underneath the haze of med-ex. Yes. _Content._ The greatest of Caesar’s frumentarii is sitting naked on a filthy concrete floor, veins full of profligate venom, letting himself be washed by the woman who destroyed his life, _while his hands are completely free._

There’s a stone in his gut, something cold, spreading tendrils through his innards and buzzing in his head. Rage. But not at the courier, this time. At himself. He looks at himself through the cracks in the roof, lamblike at the foot of the bitch as she pets and prods and wipes filth away from his knuckles, which hang limply in her hand instead of crushing themselves around her windpipe.

“Courier.” His voice is smooth and steady. “My legs?”

“Hm?” she looks down at the mess on his thighs. “Ew. You’re all crusty.”

Vulpes taps into his training and puts on his most pathetic, non-threating face. “I can’t rightly hold anything in this state, can I?” There is a tense pause as she regards him with an unreadable expression on her face, then reaches down to pad the cloth around his thighs.

He hooks an arm around her neck as soon as her head dips into view, tucks the bone of his forearm into her windpipe and thrusts upward as hard as he can. The courier’s choked gasps fill his ears as his blood begins to rush, adrenaline fighting against the pain in his stiff arms. It’s a fight between his remaining strength, and his will. She rolls over and crushes him against the floor, but he clings on, fuelled by spite.

Her back writhes against him, pressing against his hips. Her wheezing becomes more desperate, fingers clawing against his arm, making deep gouges in the skin, but he refuses to budge. Her hips buck and struggle against him, to no avail. Vulpes almost feels like himself again. He only wishes he could flip her over, see the light leave her eyes.

Agony rips through his body. Every nerve has a match held to it. Every muscle fibre is clawed into and pulled taught. Coyote slips out of his grip and onto her knees, mucus-laden spit dripping from her mouth in long, wet strings as she tastes copper in every sucking breath. She keeps the modified cattle prod in a white-knuckled grip, her finger half-pressed on the trigger.

When the pain subsides just enough for him to realise what’s happening, she tazes him again.

She digs the metal prongs into his ribs, presses down the trigger and doesn’t let go. Vulpes convulses stiffly on the floor, mouth foaming. It’s not until she smells the acrid urine running down his legs that she pulls the tazer away. Coyote stands and rubs against her neck, where the skin is already beginning to bruise. Vulpes gets one last look at her eyes. Cold. Vindictive. For some reason, it gives him the same feeling as when he looks into the flat, reflective waters of the Colorado.

 _How odd_ is the last coherent thought he manages before he sleeps into that familiar dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this was... much later than planned. blame university and job hunts. but im not gonna let this bastard go unpunished for long


End file.
